Walking Across Italy

Just when things were looking up at Casa Fernanda, the late evening brought me back to the depths of hell. As everyone started getting ready for bed, the two Danish ladies (who JP called the “Danish monsters” for their extremely unpleasant appearance) decided to take off their blouses and don their sleepwear in the middle of our 6-person bedroom! Now, the light was dim, but a little modesty would have been much appreciated. I glanced up from my phone, saw this sight, and wanted to run out the door screaming in horror. As my wife says, “no one wants to look at a 60+ year old body”! She is so right.

After the lights went out, I tossed and turned for 2 1/2 hours from a combination of (1) the PTSD from the Danish exposure episode, (2) the guy in the next room with the creaky mattress, and (3) the 7 people who made trips to the bathroom during the midnight hours. The sounds were always the same. Creak, creak, bump, creak, door slam, lock jiggle, flush. (Do you really need to lock the door at 1 am? And didn’t Europeans learn the camping rule of thumb – “if it’s yellow, leave it mellow.”? No reason to flush.

Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep and neither did my hiking buddies. They told me this morning that one of the Danish monsters was a big snorer. I must have blocked that noise out.

The learning from this episode is that I never, ever, EVER want to spend a night in a public dormitory again.

(There are no pictures associated with this blog post to protect the innocent.)